


Sinnerman

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Depression, Drinking to Cope, Excessive Drinking, Gen, I Was Drunk When I Wrote This, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Introspection, Isolation, Loneliness, Post-Movie: The Old Guard (2020), Punishment, Self-Destruction, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Worth Issues, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Why Did I Write This?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:00:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25545538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: Booker drinks and drinks and drinks until the bottle is empty and he doesn’t remember why he was drinking in the first place, and then he pours himself another and drinks some more.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache & Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Joe | Yusuf al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 14
Kudos: 109





	Sinnerman

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be the first to admit that this is a really bad fic. Like, it's not great. But you know what? Booker is one of my favourites, and I really enjoyed his character, and I wanted to write something about him. I'm not saying that what he did was right or that he didn't deserve to be punished for it, but I just feel bad for the guy, you know?? Anyway, I hope you enjoy, despite how bad and probably repetitive this is. 
> 
> (Also, I didn't realize this while watching, but when thinking back I realized that Booker drinks... a lot?? Like, he's only got a glass maybe twice, but he's always using his flask and adding alcohol to different drinks?? Also, there's obviously that 6 months later scene where he's very fucked up, but I didn't even realize)

Booker drinks and drinks and drinks until the bottle is empty and he doesn’t remember why he was drinking in the first place, and then he pours himself another and drinks some more.

Like Quhyn, who haunts his dreams and drowns every moment on the bottom of the ocean, he spends his days drowning in alcohol and puke, and wakes up just in time to do it all over again. He just rinses his mouth out at the kitchen sink, grabs another bottle and carries on with his day.

Days pass, but he barely notices. Days blend together, nights are non-existent, and he sleeps only when he passes out, either from exhaustion or from an alcohol-induced coma. None of it matters anymore. Why would it? He doesn’t matter, so the time and date certainly don’t.

He misses them. He isn’t sure who he means. Of course, he misses the Guard and the little tight-knit family they had made together, who he cares about most, who means more to him than life itself, who he would do anything to be beside right now instead of alone in this shitty apartment on the outskirts of his hometown, drunk off his ass every night and trying to imagine new, painful ways to punish himself. But on the other hand, he finds himself thinking more about the past during these long days of self-reflection, and he misses his boys, misses their laughter and their light, misses the woman that he would have died for if given the chance, and he realizes that he has never felt quite so alone in his very long life.

He doesn’t want redemption. He doesn’t want acceptance. He doesn’t want to be welcomed back with open arms, though it certainly wouldn’t hurt. He just wants them to _understand_ , understand why he did it, understand why these past 200 years have been nothing to him but absolute pain and torment.

Every day, he thinks about the family he left behind, the son who begged for his gift and cursed him when he couldn’t give it to him. Every night, he dreams of a woman drowning on the bottom of the ocean, banging her bloody fists and knees against the metal coffin, screaming for somebody, anybody to help her yet knowing that she would die a thousand more times.

They don’t understand. Nile might, in time. Maybe the dreams will drive her crazy, make her desperate, cause her pain. But maybe not. Maybe Nile will have the others like Booker never had. Maybe she is already a more integral part of the group than he would ever be.

He hasn’t thought about anything other than drowning his sorrows in the drink for a very long time. He hasn’t thought about his flask for months, the little metal one that had found a place on his hip throughout the last century and he’s carried with him everywhere, because what use is a little hipflask when you have bottles by the plenty? Andy would be disappointed in him. But Andy isn’t here. He’ll never see her again, and what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her, right?

He still finds himself wondering how Joe and Nicky are. They had looked terrible when Booker saw them stapped to tables in Merrick’s lab, and pretty bad afterwards. Booker’s last look of them on the beach isn’t one he wants to remember. He hopes they’re alright. They were never supposed to get roped into any of this. This had nothing to do with them.

He still doesn’t know how it had gone so wrong. It was only supposed to be him.  _ He  _ was supposed to go with Copley to Merrick’s labs,  _ he  _ was supposed to be the one strapped to those tables,  _ he  _ was the one that was supposed to have chunks of his being carved out and examined. It was only supposed to be him.

He wishes he had gotten a chance to explain that. Not that it would have mattered. He's made his bed, and now he must lie in it. He just hopes they know that it was only ever supposed to be him.

One hundred years is a long time. Andy knew that when she decided on it. And she knew how much it would torture him, too. Booker has always been a weak man. Joe had called him pathetic, and he was right. He was a deserter during the war and was hung for it. He has never been much of a warrior. He stepped up when Andy needed him, and filled that small gap in the team. 

He is immortal. One hundred years is like the blink of an eye for a normal immortal, but Booker has never been a normal immortal. Normal immortals don’t spend their every waking moment wishing for death. They don’t sit in the dark wallowing in their grief. They don’t try and drown themselves in alcohol. But Booker has never been a normal man, much less a regular immortal. Unlike the others, who always thought of their immortality as a gift from whatever higher being resides up above, he has always considered it as a curse more than a blessing.

He thought that he would always have the team. He thought that they would be a family until the end of time. He certainly fucked that up.

He thinks about Nile, and how brave she is for stepping up when she was needed most, for embracing her new future with open arms. He remembers the pain of having to leave his family behind. Not in time, of course, not quite fast enough, because his son still blamed him for his illness, but he hopes that Nile doesn’t make the same mistakes he did. Maybe her family is more understanding than his was, more loving, more patient and kind and curious, but regardless, it still isn’t worth it. The pain when they die and you keep on living just isn’t worth it. He takes another drink.

He thinks about Joe, and wonders if he’ll ever get the way Joe looked at him at the beach, shouted at him in the labs out of his head. He has never seen Joe so angry in all his 200 years of knowing him, and he hates that he’s the one who caused it. He wonders if Joe will sketch him while he’s in exile like he sketches everyone else while they’re separated on their own individual projects. He wonders if he’ll find any of Joe’s drawings scattered around in rubbish pins or in newspapers or in museums. He still keeps the sketches that Joe did for him in the past, and the pages are tucked away in his belongings. Booker hopes he and Nicky live long, happy lives, and never fall out of love. He knows that they’ll be fine. He takes another drink.

He thinks about Nicky and hopes that his betrayal didn’t dampen his faith or his kindness. Nicky has always been the glue that held them together, and his kindness has been their moral compass in a lot of ays. When they lose direction, Nicky is always there to direct them back onto the right path. He used to be a priest, Booker remembers, before he died. Before Joe killed him, and he killed Joe in turn. That didn’t last long. He hopes that Nicky, with his neverending kindness and unwavering faith and gentle understanding, can help Nile through this new phase in her life, and can keep the team together while Booker is away. He takes another drink.

He thinks about Andy, and the way she had looked at him in Copley’s office as the bullet he put in her gut continued to bleed and refused to stop. He wonders how she’s dealing with her new mortality. Not well, if he knows her the way he thinks he does. He hopes she’s still alive. It’s been months later, and he knows that she’s never been one to stand back and let people do things for her, to let people go through doors first, to accept help when she needs it. The pain that he feels when h remembers that he will never know whether she is alive or dead is staggering. He takes another drink.

Booker has always been a pathetic man. A weak man. A sad man. He is reminded of that once he finishes another bottle. His wife knew it when he came back from the war and heard what he had done, and the team knows it too, now that they’ve been exposed to and started to understand the darkest parts of his soul. He should have died when he had the chance.

He is nothing now but a lonely old man who has nothing but his thoughts and his pain and his booze. He used to be a warrior, once. What the fuck happened to _that_ guy? Booker drinks and he forgets, and he remembers, and when he remembers, he drinks. The never-ending cycle of long ago. He greets it like an old friend, and it stays in his home and lies in his bones and settles in like it never left. Partially, he knows it never did. His dented little hipflask is a testament to that. But he doesn’t care. Falling back into this familiar cycle of normality is better than thinking about everything he’s lost, everything he’s done. It’s better than having to remember what he used to be.

By the time Booker’s exile ends, Andy will be dead.

He takes another drink, and he lets this one burn.

He deserves everything he’s got, and more. Sometimes, he thinks about flinging himself off the tallest point in France, just to feel the pain when he impacts at the bottom, a smear of nothing on the old cobblestones. Sometimes, he thinks about falling face-fist into the fireplace just to suffer when his skin has no knit itself back together. Sometimes, he thinks about crucifying himself against the wall in a mockery of Nicky’s god, if only to burn for his sins. Sometimes he thinks about doing all of that and more.

But Andy would be disappointed in him, and he can’t bear the thought of making her ashamed of him. So he drinks instead. It’s all he can do, anymore.

So he sits in his crummy old apartment in downtown France, drinking and drinking until he forgets his own name, and waits with bated breath and painful anticipation for his one hundred year exile to climb a little bit lower.

Then a woman dressed in red and stinking of saltwater with a crazed, malicious glint in her eyes breaks into his apartment 6 months in, and suddenly the nightmares stop, and he realizes that he has much bigger things to be afraid of than a hundred years alone.

**Author's Note:**

> I always got the sense from watching the movie that it was always just supposed to be Booker?? Like, just him being tested on and captured. Like, sure he worked with Copley to record and set up the team to get the video proof, but in the car when Copley is showing the video to him and Merrick says "I want them all", Copley says WITH CONFIDENCE, "I can get you ONE". I just always thought that Booker was going to kinda fall off the face of the planet and go with them willingly, but then Merrick got greedy and Copley got desperate and plans had to change. I don't know, the wordage of that scene was always interesting to me, and it makes you think how much of it was made up on the fly and how much Booker just had to roll with?? That might just be me, though.


End file.
